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Antoine Doinel wrote:

zedz wrote:Seconded. This may well be the release of the year so far.

I must politely disagree. I'm more excited by Mr. Arkadin, Elevator To The Gallows and (yes) Dazed & Confused. The reviews I've read of this title don't fill me with excitement...the extras however are quite nice.

I'll grant that Arkadin is exhaustive (and we'll see how much of a good thing that is), but on its specs Elevator doesn't strike me as a particularly inspired package, and the presently spec-less Dazed doesn't even come under the "year so far" rubric (unless you know something we don't).

Also, none of those titles represent the advent of a previously unrepresented major filmmaker.

I think the footage of Miles Davis performing the score and Louis Malle's student film short are some pretty nice extras for Elevator To The Gallows. And if the Dazed & Confused package is anywhere close to being as comprehensive as the Slacker set last year, I think it will be great.

As Mr. Arkadin I don't get all the "too much of a good thing" grumbling. Here's a filmmaker whose work has been routinely butchered and now Critierion is presenting a chance to analyze the film in its most comprehenisve manner. Did people complain this much about the Brazil set? Also, there is still much in the Welles catalog that has yet to be properly released on DVD (The Stranger, The Trial, Magnificent Ambersons...)

I suppose this is getting off topic.....but yes, it is nice that Pialat is getting some DVD attention. Whether it's the "DVD of the year" so far, I'm contending with.

justeleblanc wrote:

zedz wrote:Looks like Gorin is Criterion's new pet commentator, which is fine by me. Maybe, if we're lucky, they'll repay him by adding the amazing Poto and Cabengo to the Collection.

.... or the full Dziga Vertov works.

I once had a series of email correspondances with J.P.Gorin about his post-Dziga Vertov Group films, and he told me a few months ago:

I am submerged with work (two new script; the editing of Letter to JLG; a double issue of the French magazine Vertigo; the release of myAmerican films in France; the collection of a book on the Dziga Vertov group; a brief article on Vertov himself; teaching etc...), and my health has been problematic enough to slow me down (too many trips played a few bad tricks on me!).

I don't know exactly when and under which label the DVDs will appear, but taking into account the ever-growing interest in Gorin's work, i am sure they will absolutely appear.

Regarding Dziga Vertov Group films, i know that they were all restored by Gaumont for the Dziga Vertov Group Films Retrospective in Brazil which J.P.Gorin personally attented to, and several friends lucky enough to see them said that they looked "gorgeous". I want to see this as a sign/possibility of a future DVD release

Poster For The Brazilian Vertov Retrospective

I've heard a bit about this film - it sounds rather interesting. Worth a blind pre-order?

Antoine Doinel wrote:

zedz wrote:This may well be the release of the year so far.

I think the footage of Miles Davis performing the score and Louis Malle's student film short are some pretty nice extras for Elevator To The Gallows. And if the Dazed & Confused package is anywhere close to being as comprehensive as the Slacker set last year, I think it will be great.

As Mr. Arkadin I don't get all the "too much of a good thing" grumbling. Here's a filmmaker whose work has been routinely butchered and now Critierion is presenting a chance to analyze the film in its most comprehenisve manner. Did people complain this much about the Brazil set? Also, there is still much in the Welles catalog that has yet to be properly released on DVD (The Stranger, The Trial, Magnificent Ambersons...)

I suppose this is getting off topic.....but yes, it is nice that Pialat is getting some DVD attention. Whether it's the "DVD of the year" so far, I'm contending with.

!! Jesus! I'll definitely think twice about expressing any guarded enthusiasm in future! (See the original quotation: I'm hardly announcing next year's Oscars)

Well, obviously you're right and I'm wrong. Any other DVD releases that neither of us have seen that you want to argue about? (I hear the MoC Naruse box set has some disappointing menus.)

zedz, I don't see anything Antoine's post to solicit such a raised hackles response: !! Jesus! ??? There's been lot of grumbling recently about how awful 2006 is looking so far (I have no idea why) and I think Antoine is just responding in general (presumptuous of me to hazard an interpretation, I know). Are you normally given to hissy fits at the least provocation--or in this case imagined?

skuhn8 wrote: Are you normally given to hissy fits at the least provocation--or in this case imagined?

No, only when I'm inveigled in somebody else's surreal argument on the basis of a throwaway expression of approval. What's the title of this thread again?

By the way, if you read between the lines - or read the lines, even - you'll see I'm more amused at the OT surreality of it all than aroused. My hackles were worn off years ago.

Back to Pialat (aka the ostensible topic of the thread). A major filmmaker. A drastically underappreciated filmmaker. First proper introduction to the US DVD market. A lavish package of extras. What's not to love?

Random post:

How do you pronounce Pialat? Please tell me it is not "Pee a lot"

Piala, you don't pronounce the T.

"A nos amours" Criterion release should be a direct copy of the French Gaumont release from years ago. Criterion should just promptly license the 2 Gaumont Pialat box sets. "Van Gogh" (his masterpiece), "Under the sun of Satan" are all worthy Criterion titles, even "Police" which features juicy Bonnaire and Marceau in their teens. =P~

kieslowski_67 wrote:"A nos amours" Criterion release should be a direct copy of the French Gaumont release from years ago. Criterion should just promptly license the 2 Gaumont Pialat box sets. "Van Gogh" (his masterpiece), "Under the sun of Satan" are all worthy Criterion titles, even "Police" which features juicy Bonnaire and Marceau in their teens.

And L'Enfance nue is incredible: it's like the lovechild of Mouchette and Les 400 coups. I also have fond (but very fuzzy) memories of Passe ton bac d'abord.

You're right about Van Gogh - one of the greatest French films of the past 40 years. I strongly recommend the UK DVD.

I saw A Nos Amours on a bad VHS tape earlier in the week. An intriguing little film- a little too episodic (disjointed?) for my tastes, but with its share of memorable scenes and dialogue (eg. the "Picasshole" bit).

I watched Loulou a month ago and I wasn't too impressed with it. How do these two films compare? Is Loulou the Gloria to Amours's Faces?

Or is Loulou the Husbands... in which case I'm fucked.

Pialat is one of the filmmakers for whom, if you ask a handful of admirers which is his best film, you'll hear as many different answers as there are films by Pialat. A few people I know speak of 'House in the Woods' (the long, episodic film he made for French television) as his supreme masterpiece; others say 'We Won't Grow Old Together' (which I've seen, and which hit me three days after the first screening as, yes, an out and out masterpiece, and terribly brutal); others 'Police,' others 'Under the Sun of Satan,' and so on. Upon Pialat's death -- an event to which Cahiers du cinéma devoted a cover, and which spawned massive coverage in France -- Godard gave beautiful lauds (in the Cahiers issue) to 'Van Gogh.'

In the now-famous 1998 interview conducted by Frédéric Bonnaud (and translated by Kent Jones) at Senses of Cinema, Jacques Rivette says:

"Pialat is a great filmmaker - imperfect, but then who isn't? I don't mean it as a reproach. And he had the genius to invent Sandrine - archeologically speaking - for A nos amours (1983). But I would put Van Gogh (1991) and The House in the Woods (1971) above all his other films. Because there he succeeded in filming the happiness, no doubt imaginary, of the pre-WWI world. Although the tone is very different, it's as beautiful as Renoir.

"But I really believe that Bernanos is unfilmable. Diary of a Country Priest remains an exception. In Under the Sun of Satan, I like everything concerning Mouchette [Sandrine Bonnaire's character], and Pialat acquits himself honorably. But it was insane to adapt the book in the first place since the core of the narrative, the encounter with Satan, happens at night - black night, absolute night. Only Duras could have filmed that."

About three years ago, Film Comment devoted a twenty-or-so-page dossier to Pialat, which had some really great essays on many of the features, plus the shorts. A Serge Daney translation too, if I recall. I think Jean-Pierre Gorin wrote about 'Passe ton bac d'abord' (Pass Your Bac First), the "integral" version of which essay should still be somewhere on Film Comment's website.

It's amazing to me that there's so little discussion of this film in the actual 2-page thread dedicated to it. Wow. Did nobody else take the risk on this one?

I'm still digesting my first encounter with Pialat here, this was a blind buy based on, I'll admit, the comparisons with Cassavetes -- which turned out to be pretty on-target, despite some differences. What struck me first of all was how he achieved a similar impression of "realism" and spontaneity without resorting to Cassavetes' endless, seamless takes. Pialat does some grumbling in the booklet interview about how he hates editing and how this project ran through a series of around 10 (!!) editors, so I think it's ironic that the editing of A Nos Amours was one of the first things to impress me. Each scene seems to end at an odd, jarring moment that is nevertheless the exact right moment to cut away, emotionally. The effect of the editing, to me, was something like cinematic blue balls, although despite the film's sexual content I'm not talking about anything sexual. It was more like Pialat would cut a scene just before the moment when it reached it's point of emotional "perfection" -- he would deliberately chop away to something different, creating an overlap and collision of conflicting emotions that is very much mirrored in the characters' interactions with each other.

I was also incredibly impressed by the sheer complexity of these characters. A lot of this can probably be attributed to the actors, who even when they're engaging in the most unlikeable actions play their roles with such vitality and energy that it's hard to resist them. But it's also the objectivity that allows Pialat to play his own father character as alternately odious and sympathetic, or for Sandrine Bonnaire (truly a remarkable performance) to give her character's sexual search a real pathos and underlying emotional logic. Nothing is ever even remotely spelled out on screen as far as her motivations and thoughts, but we nevertheless feel that we know and understand her character quite well. That's the quality of the writing here (and improvisation too, which I gather there were quite a lot of) that expresses everything while saying nothing explicitly.

This is truly a remarkable, fierce film, and if this thread really represents the number of people who have picked up on this one, I can only give it another whole-hearted recommendation.

In the meantime, anyone want to point me towards more Pialat on DVD? I'll certainly pick up the AE Van Gogh, but what else is out there and good?

Great post. Welcome to the world of Pialat! That elliptical editing and the tough naturalism of the performances have been picked up by the best of the following generation(s) of French filmmakers, but few have his ear or eye. The pacing of Van Gogh, and the decisions he makes about what to show and what not to are probably even more striking, though that may be because there are so many other examples out there of how such material is 'properly' handled.

His complete works are available in two French box-sets, but unsubtitled. I only hope that A nos amours is the first in a series of Criterionizations of those discs. Other than Van Gogh, I think there's also a R1 release of Loulou, but I've heard it's mediocre. His first short, L'Amour existe, which is interesting, but maybe not essential, is available on this disc, with subtitles. I haven't got it yet, but it looks like a pretty essential collection anyway.

Thanks for pointing out that First Films box set, it looks great; nice way to wrap up some pretty obscure and historically invaluable little tidbits.

Poking around DVD Beaver, I noticed that Artificial Eye has just released (today!!!) a new DVD of Loulou, so that seems like a pretty exciting development as well, I'll have to get that and Van Gogh to continue my Pialat discoveries.

I'm sure the AE Loulou is much better than the lousy New Yorker Loulou. And definitely get the AE Van Gogh!
Pialat is an acquired taste I'm glad to have acquired. His last film, Le Garcu, is a masterpiece with what may be Depardieu's greatest performance. It's too bad that the two superb French box sets do not have English subs.

A review of the AE Loulou from dvdtimes can be found here.

tavernier wrote: Pialat is an acquired taste I'm glad to have acquired. His last film, Le Garcu, is a masterpiece with what may be Depardieu's greatest performance.

Looks like I'll have to revisit Le Garcu now. I really liked it at the time (and Depardieu is indeed superb - almost as good as Pialat the younger!), but it didn't strike me with the force of his other films. I still can't forget the surreal vision of a bunch of accountants (perhaps an unfair characterisation) dancing to Bjork's 'Human Behaviour', however. It's like a modern equivalent of the dance sequence in Band of Outsiders.

So how does Van Gogh compare to that other great story of an artist, Andrei Rublev?

King of Kong wrote:So how does Van Gogh compare to that other great story of an artist, Andrei Rublev?

It's neck and neck. Well, they're actually utterly different films, but both among the great works of the last fifty years, and both shun the cliches of the genre very effectively. (Of course, you'll have the chance to see so for yourself in the very near future, eh?)

zedz wrote:(Of course, you'll have the chance to see so for yourself in the very near future, eh?)

Yeah - the Auckland International Film Festival features a Pialat retrospective this year - Van Gogh is on the bill.